Erlang/OTP 27 Highlights

April 24, 2024 · by Björn Gustavsson

Erlang/OTP 27 is finally here. This blog post will introduce the new features that we are most excited about.

A list of all changes is found in Erlang/OTP 27 Readme. Or, as always, look at the release notes of the application you are interested in. For instance: Erlang/OTP 27 - Erts Release Notes - Version 15.0.

This year’s highlights mentioned in this blog post are:

Overhauled documentation system #

The Erlang/OTP documentation before Erlang/OTP 27 was authored in XML, from which the Erl_Docgen application could generate HTML web pages, PDFs, or Unix man pages. The reason for generating PDFs is that the documentation used to be printed as actual paper books. The last time the books were printed were for the Erlang/OTP R7 released in 2000.

As an example, here is the XML code for lists:duplicate/2 from Erlang/OTP 26:

    <func>
      <name name="duplicate" arity="2" since=""/>
      <fsummary>Make <c>N</c> copies of element.</fsummary>
      <desc>
        <p>Returns a list containing <c><anno>N</anno></c> copies of term
          <c><anno>Elem</anno></c>.</p>
        <p><em>Example:</em></p>
        <pre>
> <input>lists:duplicate(5, xx).</input>
[xx,xx,xx,xx,xx]</pre>
      </desc>
    </func>

The XML code was stored in separate files, not in the source code. When building the documentation, the function specs from the source code would be combined with the text from the documentation file. It was the responsibility of the writer to ensure that variables mentioned in the documentation body matched the names in the function spec.

One thing never said about Erl_Docgen and the old documentation system was that it made writing documentation enjoyable and effortless. That was one thing we wanted to change with the new documentation system. We wanted to make it fun to write documentation, or at least to require less attention to tedious details such as using XML tags correctly.

In Erlang/OTP 27, the documentation is written in Markdown and is placed in the source code before the function spec and implementation. Here is the documentation and implementation of lists:duplicate/2 in Erlang/OTP 27:

-doc """
Returns a list containing `N` copies of term `Elem`.

_Example:_

```erlang
> lists:duplicate(5, xx).
[xx,xx,xx,xx,xx]
```
""".

-spec duplicate(N, Elem) -> List when
      N :: non_neg_integer(),
      Elem :: T,
      List :: [T],
      T :: term().

duplicate(N, X) when is_integer(N), N >= 0 -> duplicate(N, X, []).

duplicate(0, _, L) -> L;
duplicate(N, X, L) -> duplicate(N-1, X, [X|L]).
```

The documentation is placed in a triple-quoted string following the -doc attribute.

Having the documentation near the spec makes its easy to ensure that the text refers to variables defined in the function spec.

Another goal we had was to replace Erl_Docgen with a tool more widely used so that we wouldn’t have to carry the entire burden for maintaining it. We did that by using ExDoc, which is also used by the Elixir language and most, if not all, Elixir projects.

An issue that arose is whether it’s advisable to include user documentation within the source code. Wouldn’t this make it much harder to maintain the code?

I don’t claim to have a universal response to that concern, but in the case of Erlang/OTP, most actively developed code exists within modules lacking documentation. Typically, OTP applications consist of one or a few modules containing the documented API, while the bulk of the implementation is found in other modules.

For example, the interface to the Erlang compiler is found in the compile module, while most of the code being executed resides in one of the other 59 modules of the Compiler application. Similarly, the SSL application comprises 76 modules, of which merely four contain documentation.

Another application that is frequently updated is ERTS. However, most of ERTS is implemented in C (and some C++), while much of the actual Erlang code within ERTS is located in modules without documentation.

There are, of course, some exceptions to how applications are structured, for example the STDLIB application, where most modules are documented. However, STDLIB is a mature application that is updated relatively infrequently.

Triple-Quoted strings #

To facilitate writing documentation attributes containing many lines of text, triple-quoted strings as described in EEP 64 have been implemented. Triple-quoted strings come in handy whenever one needs to include multiple line of text in Erlang source code. For example, assume that we want to define a function that outputs some quotations:

1> t:quotes().
"I always have a quotation for everything -
it saves original thinking." - Dorothy L. Sayers

"Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time."
- Terry Pratchett
ok

In Erlang/OTP 26, there are several different ways to do that, but of none of them are particularly satisfying. For example, the text can be put into a single string:

quotes() ->
    S = "\"I always have a quotation for everything -
it saves original thinking.\" - Dorothy L. Sayers

\"Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.\"
- Terry Pratchett\n",
    io:put_chars(S).

This works, but is ugly. We must also remember to escape every quote character.

A cleaner way is to use multiple strings, one for each line, letting the compiler combine them:

quotes() ->
    S = "\"I always have a quotation for everything -\n"
        "it saves original thinking.\" - Dorothy L. Sayers\n"
        "\n"
        "\"Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.\"\n"
        "- Terry Pratchett\n",
    io:put_chars(S).

That is a little bit nicer, but we’ll need to type more quote characters and we must not forget to add \n at the end of each string. To make sure that we don’t forget to insert the newlines, we could delegate that mundane chore to the computer:

quotes() ->
    S = ["\"I always have a quotation for everything -",
         "it saves original thinking.\" - Dorothy L. Sayers",
         "",
         "\"Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.\"",
         "- Terry Pratchett"],
    io:put_chars(lists:join("\n", S)),
    io:nl().

In Erlang/OTP 27, we can use a triple-quoted string:

quotes() ->
    S = """
        "I always have a quotation for everything -
        it saves original thinking." - Dorothy L. Sayers

        "Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time."
        - Terry Pratchett
        """,
    io:put_chars(S),
    io:nl().

The ending """ determines how much each line in the string should be indented. The same characters that precede """ are deleted from all lines between the beginning and terminating delimiters. For this particular example, all space characters are removed since all have the same indentation as the terminating """. Neither quote characters nor backslashes are special in the lines enclosed by the triple-quotes, so there is no need to escape anything.

Here is another example to show the versatility of triple-quoted strings:

effect_warning() ->
    """
    f() ->
        %% Test that the compiler warns for useless tuple building.
        {a,b,c},
        ok.
    """.

The function returns a string containing a short Erlang function.

Assuming that effect_warning/0 is defined in module t, it can be called like so:

1> io:format("~ts\n", [t:effect_warning()]).
%% Test that the compiler warns for useless tuple building.
f() ->
    {a,b,c},
    ok.

Note that indentation of the Erlang code for function f/0 is retained.

For more information, see section String in the Reference Manual.

Sigils #

Sigils for string literals as described in EEP 66 have been implemented.

Continuing with the theme of quotes, let’s explore why sigils were introduced into Erlang, drawing inspiration from the wisdom of ancient Greek philosophers:

1> t:greek_quote().
"Know thyself" (Greek: Γνῶθι σαυτόν)
ok

In Erlang/OTP 26, this can be implemented as follows:

greek_quote() ->
    S = "\"Know thyself\" (Greek: Γνῶθι σαυτόν)",
    io:format("~ts\n", [S]).

At this point, we get some customer feedback indicating that the modules containing all the quotes are consuming an excessive amount of memory. Each character in a string consumes 16 bytes of memory (on a 64-bit computer). That could be reduced to one byte for each character if a binary were to be used instead of a string. (Actually, one byte for each US ASCII character and two bytes for each Greek letter.)

That change should be really easy. Let’s try:

greek_quote() ->
    S = <<"\"Know thyself\" (Greek: Γνῶθι σαυτόν)">>,
    io:format("~ts\n", [S]).

That works for the English text, but not for the Greek characters:

2> t:greek_quote().
"Know thyself" (Greek: “½ö¸¹ ñÅÄ̽)

What’s wrong?

Strings in binary expression are by default assumed to be a sequence of byte-size characters. Therefore, this expression:

1> <<"Γνῶθι">>.
<<147,189,246,184,185>>

is syntactic sugar for:

2> <<$Γ:8, $ν:8, $ῶ:8, $θ:8, $ι:8>>.
<<147,189,246,184,185>>

It is necessary to specify that the characters are to be encoded as UTF-8 encoded characters by appending an /utf8 suffix:

greek_quote() ->
    S = <<"\"Know thyself\" (Greek: Γνῶθι σαυτόν)"/utf8>>,
    io:format("~ts\n", [S]).

That works because <<"Γνῶθι"/utf8>> is syntactic sugar for <<$Γ/utf8, $ν/utf8, $ῶ/utf8, $θ/utf8, $ι/utf8>>.

Enter sigils.

greek_quote() ->
    S = ~B["Know thyself" (Greek: Γνῶθι σαυτόν)],
    io:format("~ts\n", [S]).

The ~ character begins a sigil. It is usually followed by a letter that indicates how the characters in the string should be interpreted or encoded.

In this case the character B means that the characters should be put into a binary in UTF-8 encoding, and also that that no escape characters are allowed.

After B follows the start delimiter, in this case [. Since no escape characters are allowed, it is necessary to choose delimiters that don’t occur in the string contents. After the contents follows the end delimiter, in this case ].

The B sigil is the default sigil that is used if the letter following ~ is omitted. Thus we get the same binary and the same output if we omit the B:

greek_quote() ->
    S = ~["Know thyself" (Greek: Γνῶθι σαυτόν)],
    io:format("~ts\n", [S]).

Sigils can also be used to begin a triple-quoted string. Returning to the quotations example from the previous section, a binary literal can be created by inserting ~ before the leading """:

quotes() ->
    S = ~"""
         "I always have a quotation for everything -
         it saves original thinking." - Dorothy L. Sayers

         "Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time."
         - Terry Pratchett
         """,
    io:put_chars(S),
    io:nl().

Here follows a few quick examples to show the other sigils.

~b creates a binary in the same way as ~B, except that backslashes will be interpreted as an escape character. This can be useful if one want to insert control characters such as TAB (\t) into a string:

1> ~b"abc\txyz".
<<"abc\txyz">>

Here we used the " character as delimiters as it is not used within the string.

~s creates a string in the usual way. The only useful way it differs from a plain quoted string is that the delimiters can be switched. That way, one can avoid the hassle of escaping quote characters and still get to use control characters such as TAB:

2> ~s{"abc\txyz"}.
"\"abc\txyz\""

~S creates a string, but does not support escaping of characters within the string, similar to ~B.

For more information, see section Sigil in the Reference Manual.

No need to enable feature maybe #

The maybe expression was introduced as a feature in Erlang/OTP 25. In that release, it was necessary to enable it both in the compiler and the runtime system.

Erlang/OTP 26 lifted the necessity to enable maybe in the runtime system.

Now in Erlang/OTP 27, maybe is enabled by default in the compiler. In the example from last year’s blog post, the line -feature(maybe_expr, enable). can now be removed:

$ cat t.erl
-module(t).
-export([listen_port/2]).
listen_port(Port, Options) ->
    maybe
        {ok, ListenSocket} ?= inet_tcp:listen(Port, Options),
        {ok, Address} ?= inet:sockname(ListenSocket),
        {ok, {ListenSocket, Address}}
    end.
$ erlc t.erl
$ erl
Erlang/OTP 27 . . .

Eshell V15.0  (abort with ^G)
1> t:listen_port(50000, []).
{ok,{#Port<0.5>,{{0,0,0,0},50000}}}

When maybe is used as an atom, it need to be quoted. For example:

will_succeed(. . .) -> yes;
will_succeed(. . .) -> no;
   .
   .
   .
will_succeed(_) -> 'maybe'.

Alternatively, it is still possible to disable the maybe_expr feature. With the feature disabled, maybe can be used as an atom without quotes.

One way to disable maybe is to use the -disable-feature option when compiling. For example:

erlc -disable-feature maybe_expr *.erl

Another way to disable maybe is to add the following directive to the source code:

-feature(maybe_expr, disable).

The new json module #

There is a new module json in STDLIB for generating and parsing JSON (JavaScript Object Notation).

It is implemented by Michał Muskała who has also implemented the Jason library for Elixir. Jason is known for being faster than other pure Erlang or Elixir JSON libraries. The json module is not a pure translation of the Elixir code for Jason, but a re-implementation with even better performance than Jason.

As an example, imagine that we have this file quotes.json with quotes from the film Jason and the Argonauts:

[
    {"quote": "The gods are best served by those who need their help the least.",
     "attribution": "Zeus",
     "verified": true},
    {"quote": "Now the voyage is over, I don't want any trouble to begin.",
     "attribution": "Jason",
     "verified": true}
]

The JSON contents of the file can be be decoded by calling json:decode/1:

1> {ok,JSON} = file:read_file("quotes.text").
{ok,<<"[\n   {\"quote\": \"The gods are best served by those who need their help the least.\",\n    \"attribution\": \"Zeus\""...>>}
2> json:decode(JSON).
[#{<<"attribution">> => <<"Zeus">>,
   <<"quote">> =>
       <<"The gods are best served by those who need their help the least.">>,
   <<"verified">> => true},
 #{<<"attribution">> => <<"Jason">>,
   <<"quote">> =>
       <<"Now the voyage is over, I don't want any trouble to begin.">>,
   <<"verified">> => true}]

By default, for safety, the keys for objects are translated to binaries. Using atoms could open up for denial-of-service attacks if a malicious JSON object would define millions of unique keys.

For convenience, it is still possible to convert keys to atoms in a safe way by using a decoder callback. Here is an example:

1> Push = fun(Key, Value, Acc) -> [{binary_to_existing_atom(Key), Value} | Acc] end.
#Fun<erl_eval.40.39164016>

This fun converts the key for a JSON object to an existing atom, or raises an exception if no such atom exists.

Since this example is run from the shell, we’ll need to make sure that all possible keys are known atoms:

2> {quote,attribution,verified}.
{quote,attribution,verified}

This would normally not be necessary when JSON decoding is done in an Erlang module, because the atoms to be used as keys would presumably be defined naturally by being used when processing the decoded JSON objects.

With this preparation done, the JSON decoder can be called using the Push fun as an object_push decoder callback:

3> {Qs,_,<<>>} = json:decode(JSON, [], #{object_push => Push}), Qs.
[#{quote =>
       <<"The gods are best served by those who need their help the least.">>,
   attribution => <<"Zeus">>,verified => true},
 #{quote =>
       <<"Now the voyage is over, I don't want any trouble to begin.">>,
   attribution => <<"Jason">>,verified => true}]

The json:encode/1 function encodes an Erlang term to JSON:

4> io:format("~ts\n", [json:encode(Qs)]).
[{"quote":"The gods are best served by those who need their help the least.","attribution":"Zeus","verified":true},{"quote":"Now the voyage is over, I don't want any trouble to begin.","attribution":"Jason","verified":true}]
ok

The encoder accepts binaries, atoms, and integer as keys for objects, so there is no need to customize encoding for this particular example.

However, when necessary it is possible to customize the encoding. For example, assume that we want to store each quotation in a three-tuple instead of in a map:

1> Q = [{~"The gods are best served by those who need their help the least.",
~"Zeus",true},
{~"Now the voyage is over, I don't want any trouble to begin.",
~"Jason",true}].
[{<<"The gods are best served by those who need their help the least.">>,
  <<"Zeus">>,true},
 {<<"Now the voyage is over, I don't want any trouble to begin.">>,
  <<"Jason">>,true}]

The json:encode/1 function does not handle that format by default, but it can be handled by defining an encoder function:

quote_encoder({Q, A, V}, Encode)
  when is_binary(Q), is_binary(A), is_boolean(V) ->
    json:encode_map(#{quote => Q,
                      attribution => A,
                      verified => V},
                    Encode);
quote_encoder(Other, Encode) ->
    json:encode_value(Other, Encode).

The first clause matches a tuple of size three that looks like a quotation. If it matches, it is converted to the map representation for a JSON object, which is then converted by the utility function json:encode_map/1 to JSON.

The second clause handles all other Erlang terms by calling the default encoding function json:encode_value/2 for converting a term to JSON.

Assuming that this function is defined in module t, the conversion to JSON is invoked as follows:

2> io:format("~ts\n", [json:encode(Q, fun t:quote_encoder/2)]).
[{"quote":"The gods are best served by those who need their help the least.","attribution":"Zeus","verified":true},{"quote":"Now the voyage is over, I don't want any trouble to begin.","attribution":"Jason","verified":true}]

The JSON encoder will call the callback recursively for given term. That can be clearly seen if we modify the second clause of quote_encoder/2 to also print the value of Other:

3> json:encode(Q, fun t:quote_encoder/2), ok.
-- [{<<"The gods are best served by those who need their help the least.">>,
     <<"Zeus">>,true},
    {<<"Now the voyage is over, I don't want any trouble to begin.">>,
     <<"Jason">>,true}]
-- <<"quote">>
-- <<"The gods are best served by those who need their help the least.">>
-- <<"attribution">>
-- <<"Zeus">>
-- <<"verified">>
-- true
-- <<"quote">>
-- <<"Now the voyage is over, I don't want any trouble to begin.">>
-- <<"attribution">>
-- <<"Jason">>
-- <<"verified">>
-- true

Process labels #

As an help for debugging or observing in general, labels can be now set on non-registered processes using proc_lib:set_label/1.

The label is an arbitrary term. The label is shown by the the shell command i/0 and by observer. They can also be found in the dictionary section of a crash dump.

Here is an example where five labeled quote-handler processes are started and inspected:

1> F = fun(I) ->
   spawn_link(fun() ->
     proc_lib:set_label({quote_handler, I}),
     receive _ -> ok end
   end)
   end.
#Fun<erl_eval.42.39164016>
2> Ps = [F(I) || I <- lists:seq(1, 5)].
[<0.91.0>,<0.92.0>,<0.93.0>,<0.94.0>,<0.95.0>]
3> proc_lib:get_label(hd(Ps)).
{quote_handler,1}
4> i().
Pid                   Initial Call                          Heap     Reds Msgs
Registered            Current Function                     Stack
<0.0.0>               erl_init:start/2                       987     5347    0
init                  init:loop/1                              2
   .
   .
   .
{quote_handler,1}     prim_eval:'receive'/2                    9
<0.92.0>              erlang:apply/2                         233     4006    0
{quote_handler,2}     prim_eval:'receive'/2                    9
<0.93.0>              erlang:apply/2                         233     4006    0
{quote_handler,3}     prim_eval:'receive'/2                    9
<0.94.0>              erlang:apply/2                         233     4006    0
{quote_handler,4}     prim_eval:'receive'/2                    9
<0.95.0>              erlang:apply/2                         233     4006    0
{quote_handler,5}     prim_eval:'receive'/2                    9
Total                                                     642876  1156835    0
                                                             438
ok

The SSH and and SSL applications have been updated to label the processes they create.

New functionality in STDLIB #

New utility functions for set modules #

The three sets modules in STDLIB — sets, gb_sets, and ordsets — have new functions is_equal/2, map/2, and filtermap/2.

The is_equal/2 function is useful when one needs to find out whether two sets contain the same elements. Comparing with == or =:= is not always reliable. For example:

1> Seq = lists:seq(1, 20, 2).
[1,3,5,7,9,11,13,15,17,19]
2> gb_sets:from_list(Seq) == gb_sets:delete(10, gb_sets:from_list([10|Seq])).
false
3> gb_sets:is_equal(gb_sets:from_list(Seq), gb_sets:delete(10, gb_sets:from_list([10|Seq]))).
true

The map/2 maps the element of a set, producing a new set:

4> Seq = lists:seq(1, 20, 2).
[1,3,5,7,9,11,13,15,17,19]
#Fun<erl_eval.42.39164016>
5> ordsets:to_list(ordsets:map(fun(N) -> N div 4 end, ordsets:from_list(Seq))).
[0,1,2,3,4]

The filtermap/2 function can map and filter at the same time. Here is an example showing how to multiply each integer in a set by 100 and remove non-integers:

1> Mixed = [1,2,3,a,b,c].
[1,2,3,a,b,c]
2> F = fun(N) when is_integer(N) -> {true,N * 100};
   (_) -> false
   end.
#Fun<erl_eval.42.39164016>
3> sets:to_list(sets:filtermap(F, sets:from_list(Mixed))).
[300,200,100]

New timer convenience functions that take funs #

In Erlang/OTP 26, the functions in the timer module don’t accept funs. It is certainly possibly to pass in a fun in the argument for erlang:apply/2, but if one makes a mistake it will be only be noticed when the timer expires:

1> timer:apply_after(10, erlang, apply, [fun() -> io:put_chars("now!\n") end]).
{ok,{once,#Ref<0.2380540714.1485570051.86513>}}
=ERROR REPORT==== 10-Apr-2024::05:56:43.894073 ===
Error in process <0.109.0> with exit value:
{undef,[{erlang,apply,[#Fun<erl_eval.43.105768164>],[]}]}

Here the empty argument list for the fun was forgotten. It should have been:

2> timer:apply_after(10, erlang, apply, [fun() -> io:put_chars("now!\n") end, []]).
{ok,{once,#Ref<0.2380540714.1485570051.86522>}}
now!

In Erlang/OTP 27, using a fun is much easier:

1> timer:apply_after(10, fun() -> io:put_chars("now!\n") end).
{ok,{once,#Ref<0.3845681669.1215561736.51634>}}
now!

In systems that use hot code updating, using a local fun for a long-running timer is not ideal. The code that defines the fun could have been replaced, and when the timer finally expires the call will fail. Therefore, it is also possible to pass a fun as well as its arguments, making it possible to use use a remote fun that will survive hot code updating:

2> timer:apply_after(10, fun io:put_chars/1, ["now\n"]).
{ok,{once,#Ref<0.3845681669.1215561736.51650>}}
now

The apply_interval/* and apply_repeatedly/* functions now also accept funs.

New ets functions #

The new functions ets:first_lookup/1 and ets:next_lookup/2 simplifies and speeds up traversing an ETS table:

1> T = ets:new(example, [ordered_set]).
#Ref<0.1968915180.2077884419.247786>
2> ets:insert(T, [{I,I*I} || I <- lists:seq(1, 10)]).
true
3> {K1,_} = ets:first_lookup(T).
{1,[{1,1}]}
4> {K2,_} = ets:next_lookup(T, K1).
{2,[{2,4}]}
5> {K3,_} = ets:next_lookup(T, K2).
{3,[{3,9}]}
6> {K4,_} = ets:next_lookup(T, K3).
{4,[{4,16}]}

Similarly, ets:last_lookup/1 and ets:prev_lookup/2 can be used to traverse a table in reverse order.

The new function ets:update_element/4 is similar to ets:update_element/3, but makes it possible to supply a default object when there is no existing object with the given key:

1> T = ets:new(example, []).
#Ref<0.878413430.1983512583.205850>
2> ets:update_element(T, a, {2, true}, {a, true}).
true
3> ets:lookup(T, a).
[{a,true}]

New SSL client-side stapling support #

A new feature in the SSL client in Erlang/OTP 27 is support for OCSP stapling for easier and faster verification of the revocation status of server certificates.

With OCSP stapling, the SSL client can streamline the validation of revocation status. Normally the client would have to query the CA (Certificate Authority) using OCSP (Online Certificate Status Protocol) to ensure that the server’s certificate has not been revoked.

The basic idea behind OCSP stapling is that the server itself will proactively query the CA regarding the revocation status for its own certificate and “staple” the time-stamped OCSP response from the CA to the certificate. When a client connects, the server passes along its OCSP-stapled certificate to the client. To verify the revocation status, the client only needs to check that the OCSP response was signed by the CA.

Here follows an example showing how OCSP stapling can be enabled in the SSL client:

1> ssl:start().
ok
2> {ok, Socket} = ssl:connect("duckduckgo.com", 443,
                              [{cacerts, public_key:cacerts_get()},
                               {stapling, staple}]).
{ok,{sslsocket,{gen_tcp,#Port<0.5>,tls_connection,undefined},
               [<0.122.0>,<0.121.0>]}}

tprof: Yet another profiling tool #

In Erlang/OTP 27, the new profiling tool tprof joins the existing profiling tools cprof, eprof, and fprof.

Why introduce a new profiling tool?

One reason is that cprof and eprof perform similar profiling tasks, but the naming of the API functions are different. It is quite easy to mix up the names when running one tool after the other, and running them after each other is not uncommon. For example, when trying to find a bottleneck in a complex running Erlang system, one approcach is to first use cprof to get a rough idea of the general part of the system where a bottleneck could be located. After that, eprof is run on a limited part of the system trying to narrow it down. Directly running eprof on a large Erlang application could overload it and bring it down.

Using tprof, the same function is used for both counting calls and measuring the time for each call. Here is how to count calls when lists:seq(1, 1000) is called:

1> tprof:profile(lists, seq, [1, 1000], #{type => call_count}).
FUNCTION          CALLS  [    %]
lists:seq/2           1  [ 0.40]
lists:seq_loop/3    251  [99.60]
                         [100.0]
ok

Note that call counting is always done for all processes.

The bulk of the work for lists:seq/2 is done in lists:seq_loop/3, which was called 251 times. Since we asked for 1000 integers, we reach the conclusion that each tail-recursive call to seq_loop/3 creates four list elements at once. That can be confirmed by looking at the source code.

To measure the time for each call, we only need to replace call_count with call_time:

2> tprof:profile(lists, seq, [1, 1000], #{type => call_time}).

****** Process <0.94.0>  --  100.00% of total ***
FUNCTION          CALLS  TIME (μs)  PER CALL  [     %]
lists:seq/2           1          0      0.00  [  0.00]
lists:seq_loop/3    251         50      0.20  [100.00]
                                50            [ 100.0]
ok

Call time is only measured the process that called tprof:profile/4 and any process spawned by that process.

By replacing call_time with call_memory the amount of memory consumed by each call will be measured:

3> tprof:profile(lists, seq, [1, 1000], #{type => call_memory}).

****** Process <0.97.0>  --  100.00% of total ***
FUNCTION          CALLS  WORDS  PER CALL  [     %]
lists:seq_loop/3    251   2000      7.97  [100.00]
                          2000            [ 100.0]
ok

The total number of words created is 2000, which make sense since each list element needs 2 words. The number of words consumed per call is 2000 / 251, which is approximately 7.97 or almost 8. That also makes sense since each tail-recursive call creates 4 list elements, or 8 words, and there are 250 such calls. The remaining call creates the final empty list ([]).

call_memory tracing was introduced in the runtime system in Erlang/OTP 26, but was not exposed in any existing profiling tool because it didn’t really fit in any of them. It made more sense to enable support for it in a new tool.

Multiple trace sessions #

Tracing makes it possible to observe, debug, analyse, and measure the performance of a running Erlang system. Over the year, numerous tools using tracing has been developed. In Erlang/OTP alone, several tools leverage tracing for different purposes:

In Erlang/OTP 26 and earlier tracing had some limitations:

  • There could only be a single tracer per traced process.

  • The configuration for which processes and functions to trace were global within the runtime system.

Those limitations meant that different tracing tools could easily step on each other’s toes. The treacherous part was that using multiple tracing tools at the same time would seem to work for a while… until it didn’t.

In Erlang/OTP 27, multiple trace sessions can be created. Each trace session has its own tracer process and configuration for which processes and functions to trace.

To create a trace session and set up tracing, there is the new trace module in the Kernel application. Tools that set up tracing using that module will no longer interfere with each other. Tools that use the old API will share a single global trace session.

In the initial Erlang/OTP 27 release, some of the tools using tracing have been updated to use trace sessions. Other tools will be updated in upcoming maintenance releases.

We have tried to design the new API in a way to make it relatively easy for maintainers of external tools to migrate their code. Apart from the names of the functions and the first argument (the session argument), the other arguments and their semantics are almost entirely identical to the old API.

Quick trace session example #

Here is an example to show how the new API is used. First we’ll need a tracer process that prints all trace messages it receives:

1> Tracer = spawn(fun F() -> receive M -> io:format("== ~p ==\n", [M]), F() end end).
<0.90.0>

Having a tracer process, we can create a trace session:

2> Session = trace:session_create(my_session, Tracer, []).
{#Ref<0.179442114.3923902468.103849>,{my_session,0}}

Next we turn on call tracing on the current process:

3> trace:process(Session, self(), true, [call]).
1

Make sure that module array is loaded and trace all calls in it:

4> l(array).
{module,array}
5> trace:function(Session, {array,'_','_'}, [], [local]).
89

Next create a new array:

6> array:new(10).
== {trace,<0.88.0>,call,{array,new,"\n"}} ==
{array,10,0,undefined,10}
== {trace,<0.88.0>,call,{array,new_0,[10,0,false]}} ==
== {trace,<0.88.0>,call,{array,new_1,["\n",0,false,undefined]}} ==
== {trace,<0.88.0>,call,{array,new_1,[[],10,true,undefined]}} ==
== {trace,<0.88.0>,call,{array,new,[10,true,undefined]}} ==
== {trace,<0.88.0>,call,{array,find_max,"\t\n"}} ==

Note that trace messages are randomly intermingled with the return value of the call.

When we are done, we can destroy the session:

7> trace:session_destroy(Session).

If we don’t destroy the session, it will be automatically destroyed when the last reference to it goes away.

Native coverage support #

The Cover tool for determining code coverage has long been part of Erlang/OTP.

Traditionally, Cover collected its coverage metrics without the help of any specialized functionality in the runtime system. To count how many times each line in a module was executed, Cover instrumented abstract code for the module by inserting calls to ets:update_counter/3 on each executable line.

That worked, but the cover-instrumented Erlang code would always run slower. How much slower depended on the nature of the code being tested.

In Erlang/OTP 27, runtime systems supporting the JIT (just-in-time compiler) can now collect coverage metrics in the runtime system with minimal performance overhead.

The Cover tool has been updated to automatically take advantage of native coverage support if supported by the runtime system. When running the test suites for most OTP applications, there is no noticeable difference in execution time running with and without Cover.

The native coverage support can also be used directly for performing measurements that Cover cannot accomplish, such as collecting metrics for code that is executed while the Erlang runtime system is starting.

Here is a quick example showing how we can collect coverage metrics for init, which is the first module executed when starting up the runtime system. First we need to instruct the runtime system to instrument all functions in all modules with extra code to count the number of times each function is called:

bin/erl +JPcover function_counters

The runtime system starts normally. We can now read out the counters for the init module:

1> lists:reverse(lists:keysort(2, code:get_coverage(function, init))).
[{{archive_extension,0},392},
 {{get_argument1,2},198},
 {{objfile_extension,0},101},
 {{boot_loop,2},64},
 {{request,1},55},
 {{to_strings,1},44},
 {{do_handle_msg,2},38},
 {{handle_msg,2},38},
 {{b2s,1},38},
 {{get_argument,2},33},
 {{get_argument,1},31},
 {{'-load_modules/2-lc$^0/1-0-',1},30},
 {{'-load_modules/2-lc$^1/1-2-',1},30},
 {{'-load_modules/2-lc$^2/1-3-',1},30},
 {{'-load_modules/2-lc$^3/1-4-',1},30},
 {{extract_var,2},30},
 {{'-prepare_loading_fun/0-fun-0-',3},29},
 {{eval_script,2},23},
 {{append,1},18},
 {{get_arguments,1},18},
 {{reverse,1},17},
 {{check,2},17},
 {{ensure_loaded,2},16},
 {{ensure_loaded,1},16},
 {{do_load_module,2},14},
 {{do_ensure_loaded,2},14},
 {{get_flag_args,...},12},
 {{...},...},
 {...}|...]

The returned list of counter values for each function is sorted in descending order on the number of time each function was executed.

For more information, see Native Coverage Support in the documentation for the code module.

Deprecating archives #

Archives is experimental functionality that has existed in Erlang/OTP for a long time. Part of the support for archives is deprecated in Erlang/OTP 27.

The reason is that the performance of code loading from archives has never been great. Even worse is that the very existence of the archive functionality degrades the performance of code loading even when no archives are used, and complicates or prevents optimizations aimed at reducing startup time.

In Erlang/OTP 27, the following functionality is deprecated:

  • Using archives for packaging a single application or parts of a single application into an archive file that is included in the code path. This functionality will likely be removed in Erlang/OTP 28.

  • The code:lib_dir/2 function. This function was introduced to allow reading files inside archives. In Erlang/OTP 28, the function itself will not be removed, but it will most likely no longer support looking into archives.

  • All functionality to handle archives in module erl_prim_loader. That same functionality is likely to be removed in Erlang/OTP 28.

  • The -code_path_choice flag for erl. In Erlang/OTP 27, the default has changed from relaxed to strict. This flag is likely to be removed in Erlang/OTP 28.

In order to use archives in Erlang/OTP 27, it is necessary to use the flag -code_path_choice relaxed.

Using a single archive in an Escript is not deprecated #

An archive can still be used to hold all files needed by an Escript. However, to access files in the archive (for example, to read templates or other data files), the only supported way guaranteed to work in future releases is to use the escript:extract/2 function.